A broken funny bone.

It's a saying I've heard reference to throughout my life. Someone has no sense of humor, or they simply didn't get whatever joke, or perhaps they were offended by a joke and someone else will comment,"I guess you've got a broken funny bone." Or (more commonly, I think) you bang you're elbow and feel a shooting pain up you're upper arm and someone will say "Careful, don't break your funny bone." Well, youngest DD broke her funny bone. No, I'm not joking.

She was playing on the swings with friends and they started pushing her a little too vigorously and she fell off. She came home crying. So I did what I always do, hugged her, visually looked her over for obvious injuries and plopped her in front of the TV. A half an hour of Sponge Bob, and she was still intermittently sobbing that it hurt so I figured something is probably really wrong.



I called DH and we were soon on our way to the Emergency Room. (And let me tell you FG friends, there were absolutely no FG friendly snacks in the hospital's vending machine! Everything was loaded with artificial garbage. All we could give the kid was some Coke and Glee Gum that I had in my purse.) Three hours later she was acting quite perky and we were ready to give up and go home when they finally called us back into the examination room. Our jaws just about hit the floor when they told us she had a fracture in her humerus bone. The nurse even commented that DD was the happiest kid with a broken bone that she had ever seen. Apparently DD has a very high pain tolerance.



The break is about an inch from her shoulder, so it can't be cast. They gave her an immobilizing sling. Of course they only had an adult size, so I could probably wind the straps about her twice if I wanted to. She's to wear it 24/7, even sleep with it. Obviously it needs to be removed whenever she's changing clothes, so lucky me, I get to dress my 7yo.



The next afternoon we went to the orthopaedic specialist. He showed me the x-rays. The bone is not broken the whole way through. The fracture is not in the growth plate. And that area of the bone is surrounded by a thick membrane which will help to hold the bone in place while it heals.
Just about the best possible kind of break a child can have. He gave her a child's size sling. Just a normal sling - not even an immobilizing sling. He assured me that she'll be fine with that. The biggest problem right now? No cartwheels, no biking, no scooters, no running - basically nothing active because there's no protection if she should happen to fall.


The neighbors were going around telling everyone that their friend broke her collar bone. I had to correct them. "No, no. She broke her funny bone. . . Seriously."